Therapeutic Homes Program

The Center’s Therapeutic Homes Program offers therapeutic foster care for children and adolescents with moderate to severe emotional and behavioral disturbances.

This program relies on highly trained, professional treatment parents (foster parents) to help youth learn how to function effectively at home, at school, and in the community. These treatment parents are supported by an interdisciplinary team of clinicians, therapists, doctors, teachers and other community professionals to provide community-based care for special-needs youth.

The program is based on the nationally acclaimed “Common Sense Parenting” model, which emphasizes two things: the heart and the head. The head represents the logical, practical methods of teaching a child. The heart represents nurturing, unconditional love and acceptance for a child in the home. The two principals must work together to be effective, and can ultimately become a powerful combination for many children.

The skills in this curriculum are positive and focus on preventing problems by teaching children to make positive changes in their behaviors and their relationships. Ongoing training sessions teach the Center’s foster parents and the youth’s biological parents the skills and techniques of effective parenting, including effective praise, preventive teaching, corrective teaching and teaching self-control.

The approach also acknowledges the love and patience and the incredible energy that are required for effective parenting. Spending time with children is a crucial element in this process, and we expect this to be our treatment parents’ primary focus. Effective teaching cannot happen without spending ample time with each child, practicing age-appropriate activities, and providing family time and positive modeling.

Finally, an important and consequential component of the healing process is for children to gain the insight needed to understand and resolve the trauma, grief, and loss they have experienced. This is the work of our consulting physicians and a team committed therapists on staff and in the community. Without success in this area, children cannot effectively attach to a new adoptive family or reconnect with their family of origin following reunification.

This program receives annual financial support from the County of El Paso and the TX Department of Family & Protective Services.